Session 1: How do I understand a force?

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Before you start the investigation on the concept of force, this session will help you to access the mental representation that students have about forces.

 For young French speaking children force and strength is the same word. This induces already a very “directed” representation!

 Objectives

• To design experiments to show what a force is.
• To discuss and show which are the effects of forces.

Material

All kind of objects, for example:

• heavy weights
• cars with wheels
• hair dryer
• straw
• ping pong ball
• heavier ball
• ropes
• box with water
• small airplanes
• light plastic bags
• ….

Main questions to be asked

• What do you think a force is?
• How do you know a force is present?
• Which forces do you think are needed for a plane to fly?
• How can you find out?

Introduction/Starters

The teacher shows a picture or a movie of a flying plane and says that all together they are going to spend some lessons to understand how a plane is able to fly and all the physics related to this.

However, before explaining this, they will experiment with several concepts of forces, pressure, gravity, …

Main activities

• Propose to the pupils to form groups of 2
• Ask them to choose objects and to use them to illustrate their concept of forces
• Propose to the pupils to form groups of 2
• Ask them to choose objects and to use them to illustrate their concept of forces
• Each group comes in front of the classroom to illustrate its concept of force. They can choose either to explain or to mime their understanding of force.
• Their example will demonstrate that forces can be very different (pushing, pulling, rolling …)

Conclusion/Plenary

Forces will be associated by pupils to their effect: pushing, pulling, falling, flying, rolling …

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